In the basement of the Erb Memorial Union, there is a place few people know about. Dust and warmth fill a cinderblock room where a searing furnace creates an electric-orange glow. Charred paddles, blackened pliers, steel tongs and branding rods line the walls and benches. This medieval torture chamber is the source of one thing – breathtaking art.

            Tim Jarvis, a professional glassblower, uses the workshop in the EMU Craft Center to teach others the techniques of blowing glass. Jarvis has been studying the art of glassblowing for 10 years and has been teaching others for seven. His passion for the art form has helped him to find his place in life, which is a gift that he now passes on to students. Jarvis proves that with strong lungs, a little training, and a lot of drive, students can change molten glass into a rare and collectable art form.

            Jarvis, a black-haired native of Indianapolis, Indiana, is an unlikely artist. He comes from a family of engineers, and Jarvis’s mathematical parents often wondered where he got his artistic talent.

            “A lot of times there is this misconception of an ‘us’ and ‘them’,” Jarvis said about artists. “But I think there are a lot of people who just don’t find their medium, and so they too quickly deem themselves not an artist.”

             Jarvis started his journey into the art world in 1997 at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art. He was fascinated by glassblowing, but a glass major was not offered because it was considered an experimental art form. Jarvis shifted from majoring in ceramics to mixed-media sculpture but was never satisfied unless he was by the furnace working with glass. After nearly four years at the Herron School of Art, Jarvis quit and decided to move, basing his decision on his desire to find a program that treated glassblowing as a serious art.

            Jarvis found what he was looking for in the newly founded Glass School in Eugene, Oregon. Jarvis became a founding member in 2001, and in less than a year’s time, started teaching at the school. Jarvis, who was mostly self-taught in glass blowing, refined his glass technique by working with others at the Glass School. Jarvis felt that the young program at the Glass School validated his art for the first time. Here, glassblowing was treated as a serious medium. Jarvis took joy in teaching others the glass techniques he spent years developing without instruction.

           “Maybe only one in 25 of my students gets an interest that lasts over their four years in college. Even creating that much interest is a big gift,” Jarvis said about teaching glass techniques.

            Jarvis now teaches at the EMU Craft Center as well as the Glass School. He shows college-age students how to form liquid glass into solid art. A hollow metal pole is dipped into the molten glass, which is spun like cotton candy onto its cool surface. The glass then oozes to the end of the pole, creating a clear sphere. This is rolled on cool metal, and then, with a gasp, the blower forces air through the tube into the glass syrup on the other end creating a bubble inside. And this is just step one.

            Jarvis and his students are surprisingly not afraid to work closely with hot glass or the 2,150-degree furnace. They shape the glass by periodically blasting it in the furnace and using hand-tools to mold the flexible body. Shaping is a team effort; a process that often requires four hands. As one student expands the glass by blowing into the hollow rod, the other constantly rolls the piece to keep its dripping, sagging shape on center. hand is used to constantly roll the metal rod that the molten glass is suspended on, while the other deals with the shaping the glass’ surface. A second person is always on deck with wooden blockers to shield the creator’s hands and arms from the intense heat.

            But the 1,200-degree glass is never too far from soft skin. Jarvis’ students even use wet newspaper as tool. The paper acts as a soft glove so the students can shape the lacey glass with the palm of their hands. When the paper starts to smoke, the students’ hands retreat and more water is added to the paper.

“There is an absolute truth that you are going to get burned and going to get cut,” says Jarvis, “but they’re setbacks only because you can’t blow glass for a while. You just want to make more glass.” 

            Jarvis has had some nasty injuries in his time blowing glass, including more stitches than he can count and a burn so severe that it turned his pinky tissue black. Jarvis has also seen the skin melt off an arm and has fused his own fingers together because the raw-furnace heat shrunk his skin. Jarvis always takes careful safety measures with his students to keep these accidents from happening. While teaching, Jarvis issues orders to four people at once and alerts his students if they are going to touch sharp glass or accidentally brand themselves on a red-hot pole.

            Jarvis takes teaching as a serious responsibility. In fact, it was one of Jarvis’s glassblowing teachers, Pino Signoretto, who inspired him more than anyone else. During his first few years at the Glass School, Jarvis got the opportunity to study in Italy under Signoretto, a master glassblower from Murano. Jarvis learned glass technique in Italy, but more importantly, he saw Signoretto’s passion toward his art. 

            “I learned more about what it means to pursue an art form and have so much passion about it, not to do it for any other reason besides you are pained not to,” says Jarvis. “If you stopped doing it, it would kill you.”

            Jarvis’s ten-year collection of floats – sealed glass bubbles once used to keep fishing nets afloat – is a testament to his obsession. Floats survive in ocean currents for years, and wash up on the shore colored a natural aquamarine. These floats are very much like the art of glass blowing itself. Glass blowing has survived for years in a vast sea of art forms, and even in modern times, glass blowing still has the unique allure of an ancient discovery.

            “What’s interesting about glass blowing is that it is very primitive,” says Jarvis. “It is the creation, and the curiosity and obsession with fire that have been around forever.”

            Glass is the defining drive in  Jarvis’s life. He is even studying Italian with the hopes of going back to Italy. Glass never leaves his mind, with his hazel eyes emanating the glow of molten glass inside and outside of his workshop.

            But it is the  challenge of glassblowing that brings Jarvis back. He has been “bit by the glass bug.” Although he has been teaching glassblowing for over seven years, he never tires of turning just one more student on to the mystery and fantasy that is this ancient art.